Dining on a Budget | El Maracumbe

Updated 11:26 pm, Friday, November 16, 2012

Tex-Mex food. Admit it -- if you're not from here, you used to eat store-bought tortillas and thought they were fine. But now, the thought of downing a tort that isn't fresh is almost heretical.

Tex-Mex food. Admit it -- if you're not from here, you used to eat store-bought tortillas and thought they were fine. But now, the thought of downing a tort that isn't fresh is almost heretical.

Photo: Helen L. Montoya, San Antonio Express-News

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Shrimp nachos from El Maracumbe, which has been serving classic Tex-Mex since 1978.

Shrimp nachos from El Maracumbe, which has been serving classic Tex-Mex since 1978.

Photo: Helen L. Montoya, San Antonio Express-News

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Flour tortillas from El Maracumbe which has been serving classic Tex-Mex since 1978.

Flour tortillas from El Maracumbe which has been serving classic Tex-Mex since 1978.

Photo: Helen L. Montoya, San Antonio Express-News

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Chips and salsa from El Maracumbe which has been serving classic Tex-Mex since 1978.

Chips and salsa from El Maracumbe which has been serving classic Tex-Mex since 1978.

Photo: Helen L. Montoya, San Antonio Express-News

Dining on a Budget | El Maracumbe

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In the years since 1978, music, television and food trends have exploded and disappeared, but El Maracumbe has been making customers happy with its consistent and varied classic Tex-Mex dishes.

It's an impressive accomplishment. The formula is easy to articulate but difficult to execute: excellent flour tortillas, efficient service and solidly executed dishes, all done consistently.

There's really no understating the importance of good flour tortillas in any Tex-Mex place, and the ones here are quite good. Thicker than the store-bought varieties, these have a bit of flakiness, most likely from a touch of baking powder in the dough, and they stay pliable even after they have cooled a bit.

They're perfect for scooping items such as the refried beans, which avoid the too-much-lard taste that's common in San Antonio.

Another key to Tex-Mex restaurant success: good salsa, and the version here is a solid, tomato-rich salsa with a bit of heat that's not overwhelming. It's almost too easy to eat a lot of it with the warm basket of chips and fill up before the dishes even arrive.

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That salsa also goes well with plenty of items, including the intriguing shrimp nachos topped with cheese, diced tomato, onion and jalapeño.

If you want a bit of everything, try the combination dinner, which consists of a well-filled and tasty taco al carbon, a crisp flauta filled with shredded chicken, a quesadilla, a bean and cheese chalupa and a small bowl of frijoles a la charra. The taco is just grilled meat inside a flour tortilla, so you'll want to add some salsa or guacamole to it. The quesadilla is more like a folded corn tortilla with some melted yellow cheese poured on it. For fans of classic Tex-Mex, it's familiarity and comfort.

Another familiar dish, the Pez Veracruz, is a solid rendition of the Tex-Mex version of the Mexican classic, with more of a ranchero sauce. (At the risk of sounding pedantic, “pez” refers to fish in the water, while “pescado” is a fish that's ready to eat.) Grammatical concerns aside, it's a solid dish. It would have been even better if the requested corn tortillas had been freshly pressed instead of purchased, but that was no big deal.